Stay out of Syria

June 20, 2013

The June 19 Tribune editorial "The case for arms to Syria" predicts all kinds of dire consequences to come if President Bashar Assad maintains his grip on power, but the fact is the Assads have been in power more than four decades.

The real danger here is raising the stakes by putting our own national prestige on the line and in the hands of rebels, some of whom have closer ties to radical Islam than Assad ever did or will. Does anyone really believe that arms given only to "carefully screened rebels" will stay in those hands and ensure that moderates rise to power?

The lesson we should have learned by now from our Middle East meddling is the direst consequences are the unintended but inevitable result of our own half-baked attempts to engineer outcomes that are not within our control.